Nothing Better than a Liberry.

I know that there's lots of resources, nowadays, what with the Internet and all, but it is still baffling to me that there are people who do not use libraries. Are you people on crack? Let me educate you on why the library is Heaven on Earth.

If it's like my library system, it has all kinds of goodies online.

1. If I want to read a book, I can go online, look it up, and put it on hold. I can pick the library in the county I want it delivered to, and I will get an email notifying me when it arrives. How cool is that?

2. I have exhausted a lot of my favorite authors' published titles (especially the ones that are dead), so I am constantly looking for new good reads. In my library system, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that gives you updates on books in categories you have interest in. I just discovered this feature, and given my new found love of RSS feeds, now that I've figured out how to use them, this is very exciting.

3. You can find books by looking at lists of various award recipients for leads.

4. If I had homework I could get help from reputable sources. Like for instance you could use a database instead of Wikipedia for a source when writing a resource paper. Just a thought.

5. They have free programs, including some fun little story times if you have kids. I like free stuff.

6. I could join a book club. Not that I will, but it's nice to know that I could.

7. They have free meeting rooms, which I have used for work. Very handy.

8. I'm poor, and I can check out books, or books on CD to entertain me when I am driving to meetings for work, and it is all free, unless I forget to turn something in on time. I'm all for free entertainment.

Besides the fabulous free resources that I have just listed at my local library, the REAL reason I like the library is because it makes me smart, or at the very least keeps my brain from turning to complete mush. Also, reading books can broaden your perspective, and some books I might not buy, but have checked out form the library and read and quite enjoyed.

For instance, I grew to consider the aftermath of slavery in the U.S. differently when I read about it from a child's point of view in Elijah of Buxton. In Junior High school, I grew to view the Holocaust from a more personal angle after reading The Diary of Ann Frank. And recently, my perspective on the Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during World War II through my reading of The Magic of Ordinary Days. I'm not saying that my opinion was changed by the reading of these books, because I've always thought that the treatment of the group of people in each of those three groups at those times was deplorable, but it personalized it, and made me view the pieces of history as having impacted specific people, instead of just a mass I could consider at a distance.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you don't have a library card, and use it, I'm not certain we can be friends anymore.